Edge of the Storm

It's such a strange effect; the procession of ragged nimbus piling up and the restless billowing rush of wind, but the most disconcerting aspect of the coming storm is the light: a fading of colour but not in the gentle, gradual way you'd get with the onset of evening. Colour is draining away, casting wood and meadow into a murk that seems heavy with the impending threat that is brewing up in the south-west.

There's such a downpour, cascading down the studio skylight windows, flowing in rivulets down the gutters of the road.

After it passes to the north and east, the sky in the wake of the storm is an ambient pearl with a spectral, washed out, half-rainbow appearing over the wood. In contrast, at the front of the house, to the west there's an eerie copper cast to the sky.

Someone likes the rain: garden snails come out and crawl across the driveway.

After the Storm

We can't help thinking that this is some echo, some tail-end of Hurricane Katrina. A rice farming friend from Louisiana writes:

We are fine! No rain and just nice breezes on the day of the hurricane. We are swamped right now with evacuees. We have 180 at our church and I am going to rent a house today to a couple from New Orleans that have lost everything. . .their business, their home, everything! They are going to stay here where their son's in-laws live to try and make some plans for their future. Multiply this problem by 1 million! . . . Today I am going to north La or Miss to get medicine for the people in nursing homes in Baton Rouge for the patients that have been brought in from NO. The human suffering is incredible. . . many more medical people are needed and councilors are needed. Please pray. . .for the victims and for those trying to help them and those who have some incredible decisions to make.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk